Historian seeks to unite city through knowledge of past

Her dream is to use teens for a citywide oral history project.

DEIRDRE CONNER

Carolyn Williams didn't set out to become one of North Florida's most prominent local historians.

But after moving back to her hometown in the 1980s, the Jacksonville native has found herself immersed in the too-often forgotten history of the city. Williams, an associate professor in the history department at the University of North Florida and author of a photo history of Jacksonville, speaks tonight at the Karpeles Museum on a broader history of black life in Jacksonville.

Williams, 60, has developed a course on public history, which makes the subject accessible. She's working on a second book of photographs focusing on African-Americans in Jacksonville. And she dreams of doing a citywide oral history project, getting teenagers to tape and video the stories of their grandparents and great-grandparents. The city, she said, has a rich and diverse history that stems from Native Americans, a variety of European settlers and waves of Africans.

She spoke to the Times-Union about the impact local history can have.

How did you get interested in the history of Jacksonville?

I got involved with the Jacksonville Historical Society. They assumed I knew a lot about local history, but I didn't. I did an exhibit for the historical society ... looking at the first beaches for blacks during the area of segregation, called Manhattan Beach. From there, I just got more and more captivated by local history. And then I got involved in the local history group in my neighborhood, Durkeeville, where I grew up.

There are a number of very good local historians, people who are kind of self-trained historians, but they really do make a major effort to get the story straight. They do research in the various archives around the city and state, and they help supplement the work of the scholars by doing that.

How can history help revitalize a community?

One of the ways is instilling pride, and encouraging people to invest in the community. Right now, what is happening [in Durkeeville] is we're trying to get more businesses to relocate to the area ... showing that earlier there had been a number of small businesses and medium-sized businesses in that area, and that can happen again. That's how we're using it, as kind of a marketing tool. ... with the example of Riverside, Avondale and Springfield.

What does more awareness of its history mean for a city?

Jacksonville has a real challenge in terms of cohesiveness, because in many ways we are all these separate communities. If people start to learn about the histories of their communities, they'll find out how they're interrelated with other communities. For example, Durkeeville takes its name from a person who owned a lot of the real estate in that area, a former soldier of the Civil War. James Harvey Durkee was an early sheriff of Jacksonville, he was elected to the Florida Legislature, he was a very prominent businessman, and he helped developed Evergreen Cemetery and is buried there. His family settled in the Southside area. So the Durkeeville area connects with Evergreen Cemetery, as well as the Southside. If all of those people came together to celebrate Durkee, what a coming together that would be.

Do you feel like there's not enough focus placed on African-American history of the city?

There's not enough emphasis placed on Jacksonville history [in general]. We have an incredibly rich history here and most people don't really know about it.

One example of a person who was a household name, and people didn't really know he was black, was a man called Joseph E. Lee. He was one of the first African-Americans to hold a major office in Jacksonville. He was Jacksonville's tax collector until the early 20th century. He also helped develop playgrounds and up until at least the 1950s, there was an annual Joseph E. Lee Day that all the playgrounds celebrated. It would be great [to bring that back].